I saw on Google that he had 3 children. Unless they were all childless, there should be grandkids and great-grandkids. There should be a whole army of relatives checking in on a frail old dad. That nobody heard from or about a 95-year-old Alzheimer patient raises gynormous questions about that whole family. This is not “we collectively” being unprepared. My mom is 71, has no signs of dementia, and has truly not been the easiest parent to deal with, and that’s a huge understatement. But the likelihood that I’d have no contact for a week and wouldn’t raise half of Montreal to find out what was happening is nil. So let’s cool it with “we collectively.” This is one of those situations where individual responsibility shouldn’t be outsourced to “society.”
Also, did Hackman’s wife have zero relatives or friends? Absolutely nobody on the planet? No club, no church, no friendly neighbor? In my experience, older people have many more friends than, say, the middle aged because they have a lot of time to cultivate friendships.
My point is not that there’s a conspiracy but that the cultural elites are morally bankrupt to the point a regular person can’t begin to comprehend.
Clarissa's Blog 
My siblings and I were discussing this one– our primary question was: don’t they have any family?
We could not come up with any plausible scenario where we or our parents kicked the bucket and were not discovered in less than 48 hours. Not possible.
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I find this so bizarre. And especially because nobody seems to be wondering why these two people were so completely alone. None of this is normal.
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Right?
It’s not like my family is the most healthy, functional, buddy-buddy, mom’s-my-best-friend type of unit. We really, seriously, aren’t. Everybody’s got their issues and whatnot.
But seriously. If *my* family can check in with each other every day or two on the groupchat just to tell a stupid joke and let people know we are alive… what major malfunction has to happen for that Hackman scenario?
My mom’s church has an old fellow who’s in poor health, probably dying (cancer or something) and doesn’t have any family. The churchladies have an organized rota to call that guy every single day, and if they can’t get hold of him they call the cops to do a welfare check in case he’s passed out on the floor.
Movie stars don’t even have that? That is a whole different level of poverty.
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I had similar thoughts as well. How could you not hear from your 90+ Alzheimer’s father, or their caretaker, and NOT call a wellness check?and even Hackman was dead for a week+ before his body was discovered. I can’t imagine a scenario where this would happen not only in my family, but with any of my friends or anyone I know.
Currently, we are in the process of becoming caretakers for my husband’s 80+ aunt. She is a miserable old maid who had no family herself. She’s been living off Section 8 housing in an apartment in a home of my late FIL’s which we are getting ready to sell. She is starting to get some dementia and is really in no state to care for herself. Luckily she lives a three minute drive away, even though my husband and I are busy raising 3 young children and working, one of us makes time to visit every day. We have cameras installed inside her house and on the porch so we can be sure she is getting her mail and her meals (she gets Meals on Wheels). Eventually, she will be living with us. I just can’t imagine a situation where I wouldn’t be raising alarms on an elderly family member no one has heard from. And this man was famous, you would think there would be at least SOMEONE locally who would want to check up on him.
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Good on you for doing all that! It has become fashionable to whine and complain about being “the sandwich generation” and have to take care of both small children and ailing aging parents. Like it’s a bad thing to have people to care about. Like a good life is one where you care about nobody (except victims of structural injustices) and just sit there completely alone, ready to be coopted to any cause because you literally have nothing to occupy you.
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I’m pretty sure if my parents went AWOL for more than 48 hours, we’d be getting concerned calls from the Waffle House staff, the neighbors, and every single person who’d tried to call my mother and didn’t get a response within 1 hour.
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“gynormous questions about that whole family”
A friend has a mother (well over 80) on the other side of Poland (with no quick or easy way to get there) and they call basically every day not just for signs of physical health but to monitor for signs that she can’t be on her own anymore. She’s made it clear that she doesn’t want to move but there are contingency plans…
I’m trying to come up with scenarios where no one who knew them wondered what was going on for about two weeks and failing to come up with anything that doesn’t depend on one or more people being terrible human beings….
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Three children. How is this possible with 3 children?
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“How is this possible with 3 children?”
The dog that didn’t bark…. why was the wife the only caretaker? She was no spring chicken and taking care of an Alzheimer’s sufferer is a full-time emotionally exhausting task. The very wealthy with family… difficulties usually have paid help around as ersatz family/friends. Surely they could afford live-in help or regular (daily visit) help…
Nothing about this makes sense…
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My mom has advanced Alzheimer’. My father was her full time caretaker for 5+ years, and he was only able to do so thanks to an Alzheimer’s daycare center where she could be M-F during the day. At some point, it became too much and she is now in a nursing home. I really do not understand how was Hackman’s wife capable of taking care of him completely on her own, it is a very difficult task. They allegedly had money, so why there was no one coming there regularly to help? The house is also large, so how she was able to be his full time caregiver and cook, clean and take care of everything completely on her own? He was clearly too confused to be of any help. Did they lose their money somehow so could not afford to hire help? That no one thought to check on them for two weeks is incredible.
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I have literally never known anyone with a house over 2000sf who did not have a cleaning service come in at least once a week, so this also puzzles me.
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She died of hanta virus, they possibly had some rodent infestation in the house due to lack of taking care of it.
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Anything’s possible, I guess. Just a lot of weird.
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2700 sf no cleaner 😀
Amanda
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Congrats. Do you also have three dogs with access to the outdoors?
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“Nothing about this makes sense…“
Clarissa, Methylethyl, cliff: even though I don’t know you personally, I always look forward to reading your thoughts, ideas, and especially excerpts from your real-life incidents. In this case, however, I was totally taken aback by your reaction to the Hackmans’ deaths.
Your comments made me realise that for people who lead functional lives and enjoy generally healthy relationships it is virtually impossible to imagine the kind of isolated life that is an everyday reality for so many people, even those who may have living relatives.
There’s an epidemic of solitude and loneliness that simply escapes people who are socially functional. And yes, that social desert (or desertion, if you prefer) also affects wealthy celebrities.
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“social desert (or desertion, if you prefer) also affects wealthy celebrities.”
Wealthy celebrities can at least buy a simulacrum of sociability and pay for daily caretaking help.
For that matter… how many wealthy celebrities do their own housework? No cleaners? I’m far from wealthy and have considered the option of professional cleaning for some things…
Loneliness is one thing (and a real issue) there was a case in the city I lived of an old man putting a kettle on the stove to make tea, sitting down and dying in his armchair…. and it was something like two years before his death was discovered (with the open gas flame still going).
But presumably wealthy celebrities living like castaways…. makes no sense.
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4000 square foot house, and no cleaning service though?
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Good point. I can’t believe the wife was cleaning the whole thing herself with that kind of wealth.
Then it’s really bizarre.
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–and with three dogs, who if the news blurbs are believable, had access to both house and the outdoors. I know young, spry people who struggle to keep up with housecleaning in *much* smaller houses with just one dog.
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Celebrities typically have to put effort into avoiding attention. I guess you can take it too far.
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Sad. But aging and death a part of life.
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